What's Your Healthy Deserve Level?

Welcome to Million Dollar Dentistry with your host, Gary Katie, brought to you by Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice is the leader in dental practice management. In fact, they are the best in the world at creating happy teams that implement sustainable results. Your host, Gary Katie welcomes you to this podcast as he discusses the common concerns, challenges, and shares his decades of experience in empowering dentists and dental teams to go from good to world class. Gary Katie is the visionary voice of Next Level Practice and has for the past 20 years interrupted the status quo of the dental world. He continues to bring national attention to the oral systemic connection and believes in the complete health dentistry model. He is a powerful educator and advocate for dentistry, dentist and dental teams. He is inspired every day by the courage and personal successes of the doctors and team members he has the privilege of working with. Welcome, Gary.

All right, all right. So you mentioned in your book that you were originally under the impression that once you help the dentist handle their money issues, their time issues, and get a great team on board, that miraculously all their problems were fixed. Is that true?

Yes. Well, I had, you know, again, I'm the guinea pig here. I was like, just, when I have $1 million, then I'm going to do what I want to do and then I'm going to be happy. And I'm like, there. And then I was like, oh, when I have a million dollars and I am retired, so I did that at 34, and I was like, oh, my gosh, all right, I'm going to be happy. No, no, no, no. It is the someday whens maybe never really picking up on what we discussed in our last session, which is the black hole, because we all have currency. You know, I had this vision. It was funny, this was the vision because I was like, oh, and when I was 17, I go, when I am 30, I know I am going to be bald and overweight. So therefore, this is how I know I am going to make it. Crocodile Gucci loafers, when I can buy those, when I can have a 911 and when I could have two houses, right? That's like what I know. Like I've made it because I'm, you know, I'm going to be, you know, bald and overweight. And if you're bald and overweight, that's, you know, it's all good, you know, But I still have my hair. I'm not overweight. I have those things. And I still, still did not get fulfilled. And I'm like, this is a problem. Because you look out and you go, someday when, when I have this, then I'm going to be that. And you know, it's not in what we have and the toys that we have, it's in who we are as a being, who we are as an individual. And see, we think that there's external things that make us happy. Yes, there's a responsibility that we all have with our businesses. And you know, you have dreams and aspirations and it's really important that you achieve all those things. But you know, people say, well, money doesn't make us happy. But yes, it makes me comfortable. Yes, but it's like going back into how much does. You know, if we spoke about the black hole last time, if you're trying to fill in God's eye black hole, you're never going to fill it because God's bigger than any of us. And not religiously, but just this universal concept of whatever is bigger than you. So that equation is never going to work. So yeah, what I got to see was first myself and a lot of other dentists, it's like, how much is enough? What is the game, what is the currency? But really we want to feel better about ourselves. You know, and there's drugs, there's alcohol, I've done those. You know, there's retail therapy, I've done that and I still do that and I still enjoy that. I still feel really good when I make a purchase. But it does go away. Right? But when you get connected to your purpose and you're of service to others, there is, there is a script that gets flipped that somewhere in midlife, somewhere in your early 40s to mid-50s, ideally you'll have a script flip where you actually realize that, like what's most important to you and how do you do it? If you're in your 20s, you're still in the acquiring phase and the identity phase. And then in 30s, you're still trying to get your empire. And then in your 40s, you begin to build your empire. And then in your 50s, you usually have your empire. When you have your empire, if you don't evolve as an elder and as a wise person giving what you no way, life becomes really a dead end and a dead end position to be in. And so how do you transform all this? Well, first you have to get aware of all the evolution of what it is to go through the different decades of living, but really moving from a havingness only model, when I have this, then I'll be that to being, doing and then having.

I love that. So you mentioned that success doesn't come from Working harder or even smarter, but from believing that you deserve it. And I think that was where you really had to make a pivot with your clients. After they had gotten the basics, the foundation built, then they had to make that pivot. So how did you help them make that pivot?

Yeah, what I saw was after we would grow practices, give them the time and the money, if they wanted to work five days, go down to four, and they wanted to go from a million to a million, five million, three. I mean, they would get there, and then what would happen was we'd stop working with them. And then I would check on them. You know, I always have great relationships with the people we work with, and I would check on them, and they would go, oh, man, we're back to a million. And I had this circumstance happen, and that circumstance happen, and this happened, and that happened. And then before they knew it, everything started eroding. And I actually learned this. I'll tell you where I learned this. And I think it's important to hear where this came from, because it's not just money. Most people relate to this distinction. Reserve, raise your healthy deserve level. It is not justifying. It is not about being entitled. It is not about greed. It is not about that. It is about really having a healthy relationship to the ability to have all of life happen simultaneously without greed, without justification, without all these things. And what was happening was we all have a benchmark for what we think we deserve. So I'll give you an example, my benchmark for peace. Like, peace was something that was really important. I had chaos. I was brought up in chaos. All I ever wanted was peace. So I walked in this spa, and in the spa was this little angel sitting behind a desk. And she'd sit there, and I would go visit it, and she's a little angel. And they had, like, feng shui bells in the door. She would whisper. She goes, good afternoon, Gary. Thank you for coming in. And the aromatherapy was blissfully emitting from the little emitter. And then the views, the music was just this really Buddha bar spa. And she would greet me, and she was an angel, and her wings were flapping behind. And, you know, so I would go into this place, and then I would be like, oh, my gosh, who created? And she said, I do. And I said, well, do you want to get married? And she said, sure. Now I'm shortening this. This is the Cliff Notes version. She's my wife. Her name is Judith. And then we get married. In our first year, we had the hardest year ever. Because what I wanted, what I really wanted was peace and serenity and a loving wife and a home. And I would come home and it was so deafening, quiet and peaceful that my benchmark for peace and quiet was, you know, yelling in my house and throwing things were the norm. And so when I got what I always wanted, I couldn't be with it. So I would. My wife sat me down one day, she goes, do you know you're bringing chaos into this beautiful, peaceful home? And I want you to know it just doesn't work for me. So I was, I was if, you know, Wiley Coyote, I was the guy that would bring the dynamite in with the Acme dynamite, and I would try to blow up the house because that was comfortable for me. If you were brought up with no money and now you have money, you kill it off and squander it. If you were brought up in chaos and now you have peace, you are not going to continue to create peace. You're going to try to take yourself back to the benchmark that was created, which is comfortable for you. Now, here's the distinction. You may not intellectually want it, but if you don't evolve and allow yourself to have peace and, and consciously start creating it, you will manifest chaos. If you want money and you never had money, we have to teach you how to receive money. Because here's what happens. It's called Parkinson's Law. It's the law of the universe. It's not the neurological thing. There's actually a guy called Parkinson's. And here's what we learned. If you don't have money or time, here's what happens. You ever notice that your expenses rise to meet your new levels of income? You can't have money, so you get rid of it. I, you know, we teach, have to teach people how to receive in the second year of our curriculum, and that's what my second book is about, is teaching you, not how to squander money. And here's why this is so profound. Because in 2001, and this is an ADA survey 2001 that get us income has been flat since 2001. 20 years later, the average retirement age because of 9, 11, 2008, and now the pandemic, it's now 69 on the average retirement age and 96% of people cannot retire financially free from dentistry at all, ever. So this is the heart of the matter.

This is really incredible to me because, you know, used to, back in the day, I taught some meditation and one of the things I would do is I would tell people to take their. To go to the ocean and scoop it up. And then the way I could measure whether or not they were feeling good about themselves was I would ask them what container they used and if they were using the tiny little teacup or if they were using a giant tube. I knew who was feeling better about themselves and who could receive more at that time. I kept telling them, how about you receive in the largest container that you can imagine? How about you don't even create a container anymore. You just receive the wave? You say in your book that we need to change the size of our container to increase our HDL and our capacity to receive. And I think that is a very powerful, powerful statement there.

Well, Amber, your net worth is directly related to your self worth. And here's how it manifests itself. You can have a treatment coordinator. And by the way, we do this work with treatment coordinators. If they can't receive, I ask them, when do their palms sweat? They go, $500. I'm going, you're never going to close a case, no matter what system I give you, because your ability to receive is next to zero. And it's half of what the crown costs in this practice. You're dead in the water if you can't receive a dentist, if they can't receive more than. This is such a blind spot. And here's the thing. There's three things in learning that we teach people. Number one is there's things you know, there's things that you know you don't know. And then there's things that you don't know, that you don't know. This is in the realm of you don't know that you don't know. And then you're trying to run around in circles. Here's where it manifests itself. If you're a dentist that can't receive ready, you're in the lowest percentile of fees. You give dentistry away. You have high accounts receivable, and you have a team that like, you don't have a full team because you're going, I can't afford it. And it's. It's this. It's this, you know, a dog chasing its tail, going around in circles and.

Right. And there's. They get caught in that and belief that they can't do a fee for service or they can't even do that because there's just not. There's not enough money in the world. And I think that's where they get into. There's not enough money for us that, you know, there's another dentist down the road. But the fact of the matter is, is that who we are and what we bring to the table is extremely important. And I think that our team members, even the team members, need to know that in a practice because I find that, you know, we're talking about a lot about the dentist, but the team members, you just mentioned that if their palms are sweating, it's not. The doctor may be doing just fine, but if, if he has a team member that can't receive, it's going to throw the whole thing off again.

You got it. And you know, it goes back to, you know, there's a whole.

Level of.

Abundance or poverty thinking here. So if you look through the eyes that there's not enough poverty thinking, you will find that if you look through the eyes that there's more than enough, you will find that too. And by the way, this is not woo woo stuff. If you're sitting there, I know it might not seem linear to you yet. And by the way, if you're a dentist, you have to have methodical box check, 1, 2, 3. I've developed this theoretical thing into a structured way that you can understand it, but you really have to get the mindset that this is a mindset. It's the belief system that if you think you deserve it or you think either. I think Henry Ford said it best. And it's, I have this like saucer right here, Amber. It says whether you think you can or you think you can't, either way, you're right. So it goes back to if you don't think it's so, it won't be. And if you do, it will be now. It's not woo woo. I have so much science, so much personal work around this and the impact that we have in doctors lives post pandemic. There are two types of docs. The ones that think that they can grow and expand and the ones that think that there are all these circumstances and justifications and enabling reasons why you are not transforming and stepping into the new world. You can create whatever you want, no matter what. I can't tell you how many times I've been with doctors in dire straits. And I think Dr. Jim up in Buffalo, he had $450,000 in accounts receivable. He was in the 50 percentile of his fees. He collected his money. And one month, the minute he flipped the switch, he stopped giving dentistry away. He started presenting cases. This also goes all the way down to case presentation. You don't think you deserve to present this case. And you do the crown a year thing and you end up doing one surface or one crown a year on patients because you don't think you should do quadrants or half mouse or full mouse. The only difference between you as a dentist and you might have better hands than the guy down the street who's doing triple your income is that they think they deserve to have a lifestyle that's bigger than the one they have.

But.

But it's not coming from greed. It's come from value creation. It comes from being of service to others. They're not taking from people, they're giving to people. And it's the front of the hand, the back of the hand. It's still a hand. But which way are you looking at it? That's the difference maker here.

I love that. So, Gary, let's talk about just one small change that someone could make today that could put them on the path to a higher deserved level.

Yeah, it's really amazing. Amber, thanks for this question. And by the way, any change, any change, any change you want to make is in the three A's of age three as it's awareness, it's acceptance and then action. And so first you have to become aware. And I took this conversation that you didn't know, that you didn't know and put it into a realm of knowing. You're like, you can't unfry this egg. Here's the thing. This is one of those things that you can unfry. All you can do is notice if you're playing with high deserve level or playing with low deservable. So that's called awareness. So. Oh, because you're going to go back. I want to go back to my crazy Italian, screaming, yelling family and Hungarian, Italian, Hungarian. That's why they're yelling. Eastern European and Italians yellow. And then I have a new family that I'm breaking the chain of and creating a new legacy for. And I go into that and I go out of that. I go in of that and I go out of that and it all goes back to. First I have to be aware that it even exists. Then here is the turning point. Acceptance. See, I was aware that I drank too much. My wife told me I drank too much. But I was in denial about it. I was going, honey, I drank a little bit, by the way, weight loss or weight gain. I was a little fat. No, I was overweight by 25 pounds. Once you get into truth. See, I never wanted to be in truth about my alcoholism or my weight So I would just go, it's fine. You know what fine stands for?

I have heard?

Insecure, neurotic and emotional. I was fine, Amber.

I was fine, fine.

I'm fine. How are you? You're fine. Now when people say they're fine, I go, I'm sorry.

What do you mean?

It's like we're not talking about the truth. And when you get in reality and you get in the truth, that's when things transform themselves. It wasn't until I said I was an alcoholic that I should have alcohol as a problem. And then I can get into action about it. But if I'm going, it's not too bad then. It's not. And by the way, this is also in case presentation. Oh, you got a little filling, a little problem, a little disease, minimizing it because you want to be. I'm a people pleaser. I want you to like me. That's what I do. And that's trouble. And then once I saw that, I was able to go, you know what? I'm an alcoholic. I need to deal with this. And then I got help. And I found somebody who was successful at it. And now I've been sober for 13 years. And it transformed my family. My son's off the autism spectrum. I'm not a workaholic. I have Mondays and Fridays off. I work 11 to four post weeks. I take 12 weeks off. You know, I'm living a dream. But like, I was a successful discontent because I was trying to fill a black hole until I realized, like, you get into gratitude. Gratitude is being okay with what you have and then taking the next steps to get what you want. But if you don't start with accepting what you have now and being grateful for it, what happens is, is that you're always living in like, for those of you like. And competitives do this. My competitive docs go, I just finished a marathon. Now I'm going to do a triathlon. I just finished this. I'm going to do that. And like, they don't stop and celebrate the wins. They don't acknowledge their team. Their team feels deflated. And because they're on to the next game, trying to fulfill the never ending hole of, you know, not enough. And so we get people to enough. When you're in gratitude, you're in enough because you're like, oh, I have my basic needs handled. Yes, I want. It doesn't mean, by the way, acceptance doesn't mean you're okay with, you know, that you want to create something new. It just Means you're okay with that. I'm an alcoholic, 25 pounds overweight, and then I can get into action.

And.

And I just followed a guy who had 36 years sobriety, and I continue to do that. And then I have a nutritionist, and I have a. I took on cycling, and I, you know, exercise. And I'm a part of an activity club. And, you know, there's this change of lifestyle and behavior, and now I get to live a different world. And so awareness, acceptance, then you get into action. And by the way, for those of you that don't have time, you have more time than you need. Because here's what happens when you give up your addictions and just consider that we all, as human beings. If you're looking at Facebook, more than 20 minutes a day, you have an addiction to Facebook or Instagram or Snap or whatever, TikTok, whatever you're doing. Because here's the thing. The minute I used to. Amber, I'll leave you with this. I used to think about drinking. I used to drink. Or I used to be hungover. And then I go. I had no time. And meanwhile, I was in one of those three phases all the time. The minute I interrupted that and stepped into the new playing field, I literally didn't know what to do with myself. I then took on being passionate about the Yankees, being passionate about something healthy called cycling. I love the sport of cycling. I do it myself. I have camaraderie and connection. By the way, the opposite of addiction is connection. Really. All we want is to be connected and being loved. I mean, I really want to simplify this life for you if you're not connected to yourself and the people around you. And I wasn't. I was the pitcher on the mound with eight players cheering me on, my mother in the stands wishing my dad was there. And I played my whole life trying to prove to my dad that I was good enough and I was all alone on that mound. And that manifested everything that I did. And it was my deserve level. And I was playing the game to prove to my dad that I mattered. And I can't tell you how many people that when I share that story, they're going, yep, there it is. Yep, I'm trying to prove. And when you step off the proving ground and get into the purpose world and you, you have distinguished, healthy, deserved level or unhealthy deserve level, and then you can flip the switch and step into it, or when somebody wants to contribute to you, you don't say no, you say, yes, thank you. That's a low deserve level. When you're pushing the gifts of life and, and abundance and the blessings that you are given because you created massive value and you're a kind, loving soul and spirit and, and you get in the way of the blessing of. That's the way the universe works. It's called the law of reciprocity. You do good work out in the world, it gives to you. But here's, here's the visual I'm going to leave you with. A lot of docs have these fruit trees all around them and they've been fertilizing and watering and nurturing them. And then they have the fruit that is beautiful and luscious and delicious and ready to be picked. They can't receive it. It gets over ripened, drops to the ground and they have rotten apples sitting on the ground that they could have picked and received along the journey and then it would replenish itself. Because the world is. Fruit trees are abundant, but most people can't pick the fruit when it's ripe. They let it fall to the ground and then they complain that they don't have what they want. Wow.

Thank you, Gary. That has, that's just amazing. I can't. There's just a lot to unpack and think about. I think we've given people some, some really great ideas, a way that they could actually get onto that path. I look forward to deepening this conversation in our next episode and if they anybody out there would like a copy of Million Dollar Dentistry or Raise your healthy deserve level by Gary Katie Please contact us@nextlevelpractice.com podcast and request a copy in our Ask a Question. We look forward to brightening your smile. And if you'll brighten our smile by hitting that follow button, that like button and bring your friends. Invite your friends to listen as well. Thank you and we'll talk to you next time.

Thank you for listening to Million Dollar Dentistry with Gary Katie. This podcast is brought to you by Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice is the leader in dental practice management. In fact, they're the best in the world at creating happy teams that implement sustainable results. If you would like a copy of Million Dollar Dentistry, please contact Amber Keithley at Next Level Practice. You may call us at 212-388-1712, extension 119 or go to nextlevelpractice.com podcast and request a copy in our Ask a Question box. We look forward to brightening your smile.